Thursday, June 3, 2010

Haiti: Struggle and Solidarity After the Cataclysm

An Interview with Batay Ouvriye

by David L. Wilson, World War 4 Report
June 1, 2010

It is now more than four months since a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti, leveling much of the Port-au-Prince area and killing nearly a quarter of a million people. Haiti has dropped out of the headlines—predictably—but the crisis hasn't gone away. Earthquake survivors still have very limited access to food, employment, and medical care; most of the 1.7 million people left homeless by the earthquake (according to new figures from the United Nations) go on living in the hundreds of improvised encampments in and around the capital.

I had an email conversation in April with Paul Philomé, a spokesperson for the leftist group Batay Ouvriye (Workers' Struggle), about grassroots organizing in Port-au-Prince since the earthquake. Batay Ouvriye is best known outside Haiti for its unionization efforts over the past two decades in the tariff-exempt apparel assembly plants—the sector that the "international community" is again promoting as an engine of economic development. [...]

Read the full article:
http://ww4report.com/node/8682

For a video of Conlutas’ March delegation to Haiti, go to:
http://vimeo.com/11055431

Interview with David Wilson included in "Haiti: Images":
http://vimeo.com/12206642
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm8DU2pO9ls

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